Inbound links won’t mean jack if nobody is searching for you
Editors and product producers have a love/hate relationship with search engine optimization. Editors hate to compromise any type of editorial content they are putting out, and product producers don’t want to think of keywords when they think of coming up with a catchy product name. I promise, you can get SEO visibility and still maintain the integrity of your content.
Here is the truth about search engine optimization:
- Great content will only get you ranked so long as you have a large audience who is willing to link to you from their own websites and social media accounts.
But what are you ranking for?
- Imagine how much more powerful your search engine traffic will be if your highly back-linked page ranks on a keyword term that your target audience is actually looking for. I promise that they’re not going to be searching for your catchy headline.
- Immediate buzz and traffic is super, but still getting that traffic two years from now would be even better.
Once you’ve done your keyword research, you’ll know a little more about what people in your niche are looking for. Then you can begin to tie in SEO to every piece of content you’re posting online.
SEO visibility for blog posts
This is the easy one, because you already know that you’re supposed to be doing it, and I’ve just explained why an optimized blog post is better than one that simply has a lot of inbound links.
Now in terms of where to use your keywords, your main keyword should always be in the title of your post and even in the meta description, because this is what Google reads first and it’s what will be displayed in search engine results. Using keywords in the copy a few times is an additional bonus, but focus on the content first.
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SEO visibility for videos
Google is working as fast as it can to literally listen to your videos and decide how highly they should be ranked. On YouTube, they’ve even begun rolling out a transcription engine.
Posting videos on YouTube is a strategy in itself. By titling your videos with keywords, and using keywords in your video (which will eventually be transcribed), you’re giving Google the option of showing your video in search engine results.
As of now, there aren’t that many people optimizing for YouTube. So when Google decides to display videos—sometimes at the top of their search engine results—you have an extra chance to get ranked. Perhaps an article won’t get ranked among millions of pages, but your video may only be competing with hundreds.
A transcript on your website is even more crucial, and for two reasons:
- At least half of your audience will not be able to watch your video at the time they need it. If they’re at work, they may not be able to turn their speakers on. Or if they need a quick answer, they may not have the time to watch. Video is seen as being time-consuming, and it is. A transcript provides them the ability to have an option to skim for the information that they’re looking for.
- Going along with the theme of what we’re talking about, a transcript will give you extra SEO visibility. A blog post with a single video in it and a 100-word description is unlikely to get ranked. A blog post that leads with a video and follows with the text within that video has plenty of content to get ranked.
SEO visibility for products
It doesn’t matter if you sell a product or a service, keyword research will change your mind about how you title anything online. In terms of product development, SEO is a no-brainer.
- Keyword research will tell you exactly what people are looking for and exactly what your product should be titled and what the theme should be.
This isn’t about keyword stuffing and getting ranked, but instead about speaking the language of your customers instead of deciding for them, what your product is. Think about that. You can’t find more valuable intel than that.
By titling your product with keywords, you’ll also find it fairly easy to SEO the landing page, because you’ll be mentioning the title over and over again. Hate compromising copy for keyword? This is your solution.
SEO visibility for editors
A name is a valuable keyword, because what’s more specific and unique than a name? You don’t even need to do keyword research for this one, all you need to do is produce the content.
Look at your website analytics to see if you get any amount of search traffic on the names of your editors. If you do, make sure that you have pages set up for those editors which include their bio, most recent articles and calls to action, like an email signup box.
So what else might you want to optimize on your website? If you can think of something I didn’t mention, lay it out in the comments and I’ll see if I can’t find a way to optimize it!
